Dodgy Business

Sunday morning at a Grand Prix is a good time to get up to speed with the paddock's latest news. Meetings have been had and, with the race imminent followed by mass exodus to airports, things aren't likely to change much for the next few days.

If there's quite a bit bubbling under, the support races are often a luxury you don't have time to indulge in, especially if you've stopped to watch England's World Cup game the previous afternoon...

At Silverstone, Toyota invited the media to watch the footy on Panasonic's latest effort - a 64 inch high definition digital screen that exposed Sven's men to even more detailed scrutiny as they laboured to that one-nil win over Paraguay, those giants of world football.

Yes, yes, I know there are no easy games these days, even if nobody seems to have told the Argies. On arrival, it looked like the pound seats had gone until someone pointed out a spare chair near the front and I sat down next to what I assumed was a German mechanic in his Panasonic Toyota Racing gear. It was in fact none other than former Liverpool striker Ian Rush!

Ian Rush in the Toyota motorhome at the British Grand Prix © LAT

Rushy was a Toyota guest and had offered his expert analysis at half time. And for a Welshman he was doing a passable job of getting behind the England cause. With Peter Crouch up front, he reckoned, we were a bit predictable, playing long balls up to the man about whom Liverpool's Kop sing: "He's big, he's red, his feet stick out the bed, etcetera..."

Rushy reckoned that Wayne Rooney will open up a greater range of options and allow us to 'play to feet.' Even if one of them was recently broken and will probably last as long as it takes the first Ecuadorian to trample on it. The Liverpool hero was personable and, obviously, so knowledgeable that the 90 minutes passed far quicker than when you're trying to stop a five-year-old swapping over to Angelina Ballerina just as England finally get somewhere near the final third...

And so, on Sunday morning, catching up with the latest on engine homologation - pay attention at the back! - I had just been furnished with a fabulous Honda bacon sarny when, on another impressive plasma effort, something stopped me mid-bite. Three abreast into Becketts in the GP2 race! Had I really just seen that?

It was Lewis Hamilton doing his stuff. Having won Saturday's race, Hamilton was busy doing the double from eighth on the grid. In the midst of an awful weekend for Jenson Button, it was quite brilliant and something for the crowd to cheer.

Hamilton has momentum right now. It looks like he will be in F1 next year. The question is: where?

Conventional wisdom suggests that an F1 rookie, no matter how good, needs to serve his apprenticeship. The best approach, therefore, is to 'place him' in one of the smaller teams out of the spotlight, where he can learn his trade before joining a front-running team - if he's good enough and when he's ready. It's too much of a risk for a front-running team to plug him straight in when they need two reliable points-scorers to challenge for the constructors' championship.

It's the approach that Flavio Briatore took with Fernando Alonso, placing him with Paul Stoddart's Minardi team to learn the circuits and cut his F1 teeth. When he came back to Renault, he was ready to win races.

Hamilton, of course, has had his career supported and guided by Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh at McLaren. So good a job has he been doing, however, that inevitably, with McLaren looking highly likely to be without both Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya at the end of the year, Lewis's name is being talked about in connection with a McLaren race seat.

There has also been talk of Midland. The team's supply of Toyota V8s will go to Williams next year and they will need alternative supply. There could always be a quick swap for the Cosworths, expedient for both parties, but there is also Mercedes-Benz. Maybe Midland give Hamilton a race seat and Merc supplies engines.

I've got to admit, though, I'd love to see McLaren put Hamilton straight in, with just one reservation. It would mean Gary Paffett being passed over when he's another British talent deserving of a break. Let's say, then, that I'd love to see one of them get a fully-fledged opportunity with a leading team straight off.

There's something tantalizing about the prospect and it would be a huge point of interest to see how a talented newcomer performed against an ace like Alonso.

Lewis Hamilton wins at Silverstone © LAT

Some sages reckon that going head-to-head with Alonso is not something Hamilton should aspire to right now. The theory is that having won in every category he has contested, it would do bad things to his head to suddenly discover that there was another level - one at which he couldn't yet compete.

Coming into F1, 'tis said, is not the same as making any other step up between racing categories. It's not the horsepower that's difficult to tame, it's the huge jump in downforce. Braking points are suddenly insanely late and adjustment takes time.

It wasn't always so, and it's interesting to look back and try to find first-year heroes. Gilles Villeneuve should have won the third race of his first full season with Ferrari in 1978, leading by half a minute at Long Beach until he drove over Clay Regazzoni's head while trying to lap the Shadow. Clay was not blameless, but was Gilles too impetuous?

He did win in his native Montreal at the end of the year. Although the qualifying and race statistics pointed to Ferrari teammate Carlos Reutemann getting the better of him, Gilles was close. And Reutemann was an experienced man who could be brilliantly quick when the mood took him.

Then look at Ayrton Senna. Anybody who watched him in the junior formulae suspected that it was only a matter of time before he won the world championship. And yet it was his fifth full season before he had the opportunity. There was that first season with Toleman, and stand-out races like Monaco, but he was not in a car that allowed him to be a factor. There followed three years of mediocre Lotuses which his freakish ability allowed him to stick on the pole, but they weren't good enough to win him many races.

Now, what if Ron Dennis, instead of understandably snaffling a cut-price Alain Prost when the Frenchman was sacked by Renault in '83, had put Ayrton straight into a McLaren? Even Prost didn't manage to beat the more consistent Niki Lauda in 1984, losing the title by half a point despite seven wins to Niki's five. But Senna had Prost well tucked up for speed when they were partnered at McLaren four years later, although Alain ran him close for the title in '88 largely because there was no other team anywhere near them.

Lauda, in '84, was a driver who had been in F1 for 12 years, having retired once in '79 because he was 'fed up with driving round in circles' - or a bit spooked by Nelson Piquet's speed, if you believe Alan Jones - only to return two years later when he needed money for his airline. It would have been a fascinating contest against a first-year Senna in '84. Would Senna have lived with a twice, about to be thrice world champion in year one? In terms of speed, I'm sure he would have done.

Admittedly, downforce levels were nothing like today in the Villeneuve era but they were getting up there when Senna arrived, and there were some initial doubts about Ayrton's fitness. But nobody can say that about the F1 cars that greeted the arrival of Michael Schumacher.

Michael obviously hadn't read the learning year script when he turned up in a Jordan at Spa, which he had only been round on a bicycle despite what Willy Weber told Eddie Jordan, and went so fast that Andrea de Cesaris was tormented. Then he went straight to Benetton and blew off Piquet, a three-time champion who'd also been around over a decade.

Piquet was freaked by Schumacher's speed, so much so that he became obsessed with outqualifying him and to hell with race set-up. In their races together he managed it once, at Adelaide in the season finale. There wasn't much in it but Nelson was jubilant. Until Pat Symonds came along and told him that Michael had missed a gear on his best lap and it had cost him a couple of tenths...

Schumacher won a race in '92, his first full season, and although there were mistakes, there weren't many, and he had no problem seeing off Martin Brundle, who was no slouch.

Michael Schumacher (Benetton-Ford B192) wins the 1992 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa © LAT

If someone told you that Fernando Alonso would have been psychologically damaged by Briatore putting him straight into the Renault team in 2001, against Giancarlo Fisichella, would you go for it? But I'm willing to concede that with Hamilton and Alonso you might just be trying to balance a different equation.

Alonso is a true ace, and he's young and at the top of his game. Like all champions, he seems to have spare capacity. Symonds says that he can be in a technical debrief, staring at the ceiling, seemingly a million miles away. But ask him the pertinent details and he'll recite them straight back at you - bang, bang, bang. Or ask him something like the clutch recovery procedure when he hasn't been asked for months and, again, he's right there.

Going in against a guy like that could indeed finish Hamilton before he's really started. The examples we've looked at - Villeneuve, Senna, Schumacher - are possibly the three best there's ever been. Okay, Lewis has got the momentum now, but if Alonso pasted him for a couple of seasons, the bubble would quickly burst and he'd be just another driver. At all of 23.

But doesn't it depend on whether you see the glass as half empty or half full? He could just as easily end up parked somewhere awaiting an opportunity that never quite came. Mike Hakkinen waited long enough when the talent was obvious, and Jenson Button will know exactly where I'm coming from.

I'd argue that if a McLaren seat became available to Hamilton, he should grab it with both hands. The bald stats tell you that over a given period, McLaren will get the job done, although Raikkonen is obviously having trouble maintaining the faith.

As well as that, Alonso might be formidable but you have to remember that he is joining a new team and will take a while to get to know how McLaren works. In that respect, now is as good a time as any to take him on in the same car. And, in a way, even if the pressure would be on for Hamilton, he wouldn't be expected to worry the world champion in year one. From the very start he would be with a top team in an unrivalled learning situation and looks like he would have the confidence to make use of it.

In a way, there's a conflict of interest between McLaren's position and that of Hamilton/Paffett. If you were managing the driver's career you might be loathe to throw him into the lion's den. You would be looking to maximize both his competitive opportunity and his earning power over the next decade or more. And you might consider that putting him in against Alonso from day one is a risk you don't need to take. From the team's viewpoint, if it doesn't work out you simply plug in someone else.

On the other hand, what if you negotiated a two-year deal and Lewis started to hassle Alonso in year two? At least got near him? Congratulations. Suddenly you'd have catapulted him into the big money bracket by the time he's 23. Button, after all, did himself no harm with Williams in his first season, even if Ralf Schumacher isn't quite Alonso.

And so it comes down to positive thinking and, to an extent, a gamble. And I can't think of many negative thinkers who have been world champions. The bottom line is always the same - if the guy is talented enough, put him in a top team and he will come through.

But will McLaren offer the opportunity? Go on, Ron. Give it a shot.